Eighteen people crowded the living room and the dining room.
The Fentons from next door, with a tray of deviled eggs.
Pastor Joyce in her good green sweater.
Sheldon, the retired mail carrier from the corner, who hadn’t missed a block party in thirty years.
Half the church choir.
And, in the armchair by the bookshelf, a lean, gray-haired man of seventy-two with a cane across his knees and a face like a weathered saddle.
“Hank Dwyer,” Grandma told everyone cheerfully. “An old friend from the night desk. He handled the other end of the radio.”
Hank nodded politely at the room.
He did not look at the front door.
Not once.
Lenora sat at the head of the table in her good navy dress, with a lap blanket over her knees and a cup of tea she wasn’t drinking.
Wyatt sat right at her elbow, in a clean white shirt, with his hair slicked flat.
